Gone Girl(90)

I am the opposite of Amy.





NICK DUNNE

EIGHT DAYS GONE

As the sun came up, I held an ice cube to my cheek. Hours later, and I could still feel the bite: two little staple-shaped creases. I couldn’t go after Andie – a worse risk than her wrath – so I finally phoned her. Voice mail.

Contain, this must be contained.

‘Andie, I am so sorry, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on. Please forgive me. Please.’

I shouldn’t have left a voice mail, but then I thought: She may have hundreds of my voice mails saved, for all I know. Good God, if she played a hit list of the raunchiest, nastiest, smittenist … any woman on any jury would send me away just for that. It’s one thing to know I’m a cheat and another to hear my heavy teacher voice telling a young co-ed about my giant, hard—

I blushed in the dawn light. The ice cube melted.

I sat on Go’s front steps, began phoning Andie every ten minutes, got nothing. I was sleepless, my nerves barbwired, when Boney pulled in to the driveway at 6:12 a.m. I said nothing as she walked toward me, bearing two Styrofoam cups.

‘Hey, Nick, I brought you some coffee. Just came over to check on you.’

‘I bet.’

‘I know you’re probably reeling. From the news about the pregnancy.’ She made an elaborate show of pouring two creamers into my coffee, the way I like it, and handed it to me. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to my cheek.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, Nick, what is wrong with your face? There’s a giant pink …’ She leaned in closer, grabbed my chin. ‘It’s like a bite mark.’

‘It must be hives. I get hives when I’m stressed.’

‘Mm-hmmm.’ She stirred her coffee. ‘You do know I’m on your side, right, Nick?’

‘Right.’

‘I am. Truly. I wish you’d trust me. I just – I’m getting to the point where I won’t be able to help you if you don’t trust me. I know that sounds like a cop line, but it’s the truth.’

We sat in a strange semi-companionable silence, sipping coffee.

‘Hey, so I wanted you to know before you hear it anywhere,’ she said brightly. ‘We found Amy’s purse.’

‘What?’

‘Yep, no cash left, but her ID, cell phone. In Hannibal, of all places. On the banks of the river, south of the steamboat landing. Our guess: Someone wanted to make it look like it’d been tossed in the river by the perp on the way out of town, heading over the bridge into Illinois.’

‘Make it look like?’

‘It had never been fully submerged. There are fingerprints still at the top, near the zipper. Now sometimes fingerprints can hold on even in water, but … I’ll spare you the science, I’ll just say, the theory is, this purse was kinda settled on the banks to make sure it was found.’

‘Sounds like you’re telling me this for a reason,’ I said.

‘The fingerprints we found were yours, Nick. Which isn’t that crazy – men get into their wives’ purses all the time. But still—’ She laughed as if she got a great idea. ‘I gotta ask: You haven’t been to Hannibal recently, have you?’

She said it with such casual confidence, I had a flash: a police tracker hidden somewhere in the undercarriage of my car, released to me the morning I went to Hannibal.

‘Why, exactly, would I go to Hannibal to get rid of my wife’s purse?’

‘Say you’d killed your wife and staged the crime scene in your home, trying to get us to think she was attacked by an outsider. But then you realized we were beginning to suspect you, so you wanted to plant something to get us to look outside again. That’s the theory. But at this point, some of my guys are so sure you did it, they’d find any theory that fit. So let me help you: You in Hannibal lately?’

I shook my head. ‘You need to talk to my lawyer. Tanner Bolt.’

‘Tanner Bolt? You sure that’s the way you want to go, Nick? I feel like we’ve been pretty fair with you so far, pretty open. Bolt, he’s a … he’s a last-ditch guy. He’s the guy guilty people call in.’

‘Huh. Well, I’m clearly your lead suspect, Rhonda. I have to look out for myself.’

‘Let’s all get together when he gets in, okay? Talk this through.’

‘Definitely – that’s our plan.’

‘A man with a plan,’ Boney said. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ She stood up, and as she walked away, she called back: ‘Witch hazel’s good for hives.’

An hour later, the doorbell rang, and Tanner Bolt stood there in a baby-blue suit, and something told me it was the look he wore when he went ‘down South.’ He was inspecting the neighborhood, eyeing the cars in the driveways, assessing the houses. He reminded me of the Elliotts, in a way – examining and analysing at all times. A brain with no off switch.

‘Show me,’ Tanner said before I could greet him. ‘Point me toward the shed – do not come with me, and do not go near it again. Then you’ll tell me everything.’

We settled down at the kitchen table – me, Tanner, and a just-woken Go, huddling over her first cup of coffee. I spread out all of Amy’s clues like some awful tarot-card reader.